Brunswick attorney Jim Bishop denies asking embattled Chief Superior Court Judge Amanda Williams to give his nephew favorable treatment and allow him to enter Williams' drug court.
In a statement, Bishop said, "I made no request of Judge Williams." Recent charges against Williams by the Judicial Qualifications Commission cited her comments in court in which she said that even though she knew it was the "wrong thing" to put Bishop's nephew into her drug court, she was doing it because Bishop had asked her to. At the time, the nephew faced family violence, not drug, charges. BILL RANKIN
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Georgia fared better this year than most other states in the percentage of its schools failing to meet a key federal benchmark under the No Child Left Behind law, according to a study released Thursday by the Center on Education Policy in Washington D.C. The study shows that, nationally, 48 percent of all of the nation's schools failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in 2011, a big increase from the 39-percent failure rate in 2010 and the highest failure rate since NCLB went into effect in 2002. Georgia reported a 27 percent failure rate for 2011, with 613 schools out of 2,246 not making AYP. That was up from a 22.6 percent failure rate in 2010, according to the state Department of Education website. NANCY BADERTSCHER
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About 2,225 students will graduate from the University of Georgia on Friday during two ceremonies at Stegeman Coliseum.
Nearly 1,720 students will participate in the morning undergraduate ceremony. UGA alumnus James H. Shepherd Jr., chairman of Atlanta’s Shepherd Center, will be the commencement speaker.
More than 500 students will receive graduate degrees during an afternoon ceremony. Sylvia McCoy Hutchinson, a UGA professor emerita of reading education, will be the speaker.
Both ceremonies will be streamed live at: http://uga.edu. LAURA DIAMOND
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